It’s not everyday you get an email from a musician you love, but last fall local swing dancer and instructor Nick Davis checked his inbox to find an email from Cherry Poppin’ Daddies singer-songwriter Steve Perry.
“I listened to their CDs well before I was even into dancing,” Davis tells EW. “I used to go to their shows regularly, so to get an email from him was quite thrilling.”
Davis is the founder of Track Town Swing Club (see “Swing Kid”). He says Perry also caught a Track Town Swing Club gig with local swing-jazz band High Step Society in a Eugene park last summer, an event organized by the city of Eugene.
Davis with fellow swing dancer and instructor Nika Jin, who together run Track Town Swing Club, appeared on the cover of EW’s 2015 dance issue, The Spin, which was published Sept. 10. Davis says he got an email from Perry that night.
“He said he read the profile in the Eugene Weekly,” Davis says, adding that Perry went on to say the band was doing new recordings that fall that paid homage to swing music of the late ’20s and ’30s and asked if Davis and some of the more experienced swing dancers from Track Town Swing Club wanted to be in the video.
And, of course, the answer was yes. Davis and Jin both dance in the video, along with fellow Track Towners Alysa Brown and Mateo Palfreman.
“Pretty much we’re just happy that we got asked to do the video,” Davis says. “It’s really nice that he did that.” Davis says Perry requested they dance the Charleston in the video and he took their measurements.
“He had stuff set aside for us at Nobody’s Baby,” Davis says of the costume rental and vintage shop on 13th avenue — think top hats and fringe-y flapper dresses.
Davis says the Nov. 15 music video shoot took about three to four hours, filmed at the Jon Meyers Photography studio. But shortly before the shoot, Perry decided to switch the song for the music video from “Let’s Misbehave” to “That Lindy Hop,” both tracks of the Daddies’ 2016 release The Boop-A-Doo (out Jan. 22).
“We practiced to the song that he sent us and then the week before he was like ‘Hey, we’ve decided to do a different song,’” Davis recalls with a laugh. “But honestly, the tempos were really close.”
He adds, of switching to “That Lindy Hop”: The song is fast. We had to do our Charleston even faster than we were doing before.”
Inspired by the video? Track Town Track Club is hosting a social dance this Saturday, March 12, in the upstairs ballroom of the Vet’s Club, 1626 Willamette Street; $10. A lesson kicks off the night at 7 pm and live music and dancing starts at 8 pm. Visit tracktownswing.com for more info.
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